Pigeon Atelier Letterpress

Lately I’ve been trying to solicit more local stores and businesses, especially Québec shops that have a stationery flair. One that passed through my Instagram mentions was Pigeon Atelier Letterpress.

From the name they obviously are mostly a print shop, which typically means cards and wall art. But their wares included candles, gift boxes, and notebooks.

Their greetings cards were of very high quality and offered something to both Anglophones, Francophones and the silent types.

I enjoyed their house-printed (and, based on the product description, apparently locally manufactured) notebooks. They came in two sizes that I thought I would try for my A5 tastes. One thing I did not like was the fact that, like many other sellers, their “notebook sets” came with different interior page types, rather than different exterior designs. So for those of us who like one specific type of notebook, these sets were not a good value, and I needed to only buy individual lined books to get ones I could use. Pigeon is not the only seller who does this and honestly the logic behind this trend escapes me.

Alas, like many North American productions, finding A-format sizes are a challenge, and both of these did not measure up well. The smaller format are just a bit too small and I went through it very fast, whilst the larger is much closer to an 8x10 cahier, and would not fit into my notebook holders.

I did like the extra touch of a kraft or colour interior centre page, which makes the stitching hold better and gives the whole thing a classy look and provides extra creative space for the print shop. Unfortunately, the worst part was the paper’s ability to deal with ink. I don’t use pens, but both my stamps and markers bled through to such an extent that the pencil on the reverse side became unreadable. This is definitely a pencil- or ball-point-only surface.

I would recommend this shop for their fun and well-designed cards and quality print jobs, but recommend another resource for notebooks. The search for quality Québec-made A5 stitch-bound travel notebooks continues…